An investigation should be held into claims that a Conservative politician abused children in the 1970s, the children’s commissioner for Wales has said.

Keith Towler said that a new inquiry needs to be held into allegations that a top Tory was involved in a paedophile ring to avoid suggestions of a cover-up.

Steven Messham told the BBC’s Newsnight of abuse suffered at the hands of a senior politician in the 1970s (Image: BBC)

Mr Towler spoke out after a man who says he was abused in a north Wales care home in the 1970s said his case, and those of others, had been ‘swept under the carpet,’ despite a three-year inquiry in the 1990s.

Steven Messham told BBC Newsnight that he was unable to bring up abuse that occurred outside the care system due to the terms of reference of the Waterhouse inquiry.

He claimed that a Tory politician, who was high up at the time, was involved in the abuse.

Mr Towler has said that a full investigation needs to be instituted.

Speaking to BBC Radio 5 he said: ‘I would support a full inquiry.

‘The only way that we can clearly put that to bed is to say, at the top of the tree, we will conduct that inquiry and we will allow that inquiry to go as far as it needs to go to make sure that the evidence that witnesses want to give and that victims want to give is fully heard.

‘Unless you do that, that level of suspicion will always be around that there is a cover-up… No one should be protected. Society needs to know that it is clean in this sense.’